[Illustration: SHE WALKED RIGHT UP TO THE PONY’S HEAD. _Dorothy Dale in
the West Page 61_]
DOROTHY DALE
IN THE WEST
BY
MARGARET PENROSE
AUTHOR OF “DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY,” “DOROTHY
DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL,” “THE MOTOR
GIRLS SERIES,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
BOOKS BY MARGARET PENROSE
THE DOROTHY DALE SERIES
DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY
DOROTHY DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL
DOROTHY DALE’S GREAT SECRET
DOROTHY DALE AND HER CHUMS
DOROTHY DALE’S QUEER HOLIDAYS
DOROTHY DALE’S CAMPING DAYS
DOROTHY DALE’S SCHOOL RIVALS
DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY
DOROTHY DALE’S PROMISE
DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST
THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
Price per volume, 60 cents, postpaid.
THE MOTOR GIRLS
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON A TOUR
THE MOTOR GIRLS AT LOOKOUT BEACH
THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CEDAR LAKE
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON THE COAST
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CRYSTAL BAY
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON WATERS BLUE
_Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York_
Copyright, 1915, by
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A SURPRISE IS COMING 1
II. “HOORAY FOR THE WILD WEST!” 10
III. THE “TWO-FACED” MAN 17
IV. TO CATCH THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS 24
V. THE OLD LADY WITH THE BASKET 33
VI. “THE BREATH OF THE NIGHT” 44
VII. A NIGHT WITH A KNIGHT 57
VIII. THE NIGHT ADVENTURE CONTINUED 72
IX. WHAT FOLLOWED AN ELOPEMENT 82
X. THE MAN WHO WOULD HAVE DIED INDOORS 91
XI. AT DUGONNE AT LAST 101
XII. ON THE ROAD TO HARDIN’S 109
XIII. AT THE RANCH-HOUSE 123
XIV. “THE SNAKE IN THE GRASS” 133
XV. EXPLORING 141
XVI. IN THE GORGE 147
XVII. FLORES 154
XVIII. OPHELIA COMES VISITING 162
XIX. “’WAY UP IN THE MOUNTAIN-TOP, TIP-TOP!” 172
XX. TWO EYES IN THE DARK 182
XXI. DOROTHY’S COURAGE 192
XXII. DOROTHY HEARS SOMETHING IMPORTANT 199
XXIII. “WHERE IS AUNT WINNIE?” 207
XXIV. THE CHASE 220
XXV. A LITTLE MORE EXCITEMENT 227
XXVI. SAYING GOOD-BYE ALL AROUND 238
DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST
CHAPTER I
A SURPRISE IS COMING
“He, he, he!” giggled Tavia.
“What _is_ the matter now, child?” demanded Dorothy Dale, haughtily.
“There are no ‘hes’ in this lane. The road is empty before us----”
“And the world would be, too, if it wasn’t for the possible ‘hes’ that
are to come into our lives,” quoth Tavia, with shocking frankness.
“You talk like a cave girl,” declared her chum. “Is there nothing on
your mind but _boys_?”
“Yes’m! More boys!” chuckled Tavia. “It is June. The bridal-wreath is
in bloom. If ‘In spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts
of love,’ can’t our girls’ fancies turn in June to thoughts of white
lace veils, shoes that pinch your feet horribly--and can’t we dream of
hobbling up to the altar to the sound of Mendelssohn’s march?”
“Hobble to the _haltar_, you mean,” sniffed Dorothy, with her best
suffragette air.
“How smart!” crowed her chum. “But you mustn’t blame me for giggling
_this_ morning--you mustn’t!”
“Why not? What particular excuse have you?”
“That shad we had for breakfast. Shad is as full of bones as Cologne’s
shoes are of feet. I always manage to swallow some of them--the bones,
I mean, not dear Florida Water--Rosemary’s tootsies--and those said
bones are tickling me right now.”
“How absurd,” said Dorothy Dale, as Tavia went off in another “spasm.”
“Do you realize that you are growing up, Tavia--or, pretty near?”
“‘Pretty near,’ or ‘near pretty’?” asked Tavia, making a little face at
her.
“Baiting your hook for a compliment, I see,” laughed Dorothy. “Well,
you get none, Miss. I want you to behave. Think!”
Tavia immediately struck an attitude that seemed possible for only a
jointed doll to get into. “Business of thinking,” she said.
“Suppose anybody _should_ see you?” pursued Dorothy, admonishingly.
“Then you _do_ expect the boys to motor in by this road?” cried Tavia.
“Sly Puss!”
“No, Ma’am. I am not thinking of Ned and Nat--or even of Bob Niles.”
Tavia made another little face at mention of Bob’s name. “Poor Bob!”
she sighed. “No fun for him this summer. His father says he must go to
work and begin to learn the business--whatever that may mean. Bob wrote
me a dreadfully mournful letter. It almost tempted me to go to the same
town and get a job in his father’s office, and so alleviate the poor
boy’s misery.”
“You wouldn’t!” gasped Dorothy.
“Got to go to work somewhere,” decided Tavia. “And I _hate_ housework
and cleaning up after a lot of children.”
“But just think! how proud your father will be to have you at the head
of the household. And remember, too, how much your brothers and sisters
need you.”
“Goodness, Doro! You talk like the back end of the spelling-book--where
all the hard words are. And the hardest word in the whole vocabulary
is ‘duty.’ Don’t remind me of it while I am here with you at North
Birchlands.”
“And think!” cried Dorothy, giving a little skip as they walked on.
“Think! we are not a week away from dear old Glenwood School yet,
and to-day Aunt Winnie’s surprise is coming. Gracious, Tavia! I can
scarcely wait for ten o’clock.”
“I know--I know,” said Tavia. “If your Aunt Winnie wasn’t the very
dearest little gray-haired, pink-cheeked woman who ever lived, I’d
have shaken the secret out of her long ago. I just would! And we can’t
even guess what the surprise is going to be like.”
“Goodness! No!” gasped Dorothy. “I’ve given up guessing. I know it is
something perfectly scrumptious, but nothing like anything we ever had
before.”
“I hope, whatever it is, that I’ll be in it,” groaned Tavia.
“I am sure you will be, or Aunt Winnie wouldn’t have invited you here
to her home at just this time,” declared Dorothy.
They were walking down the shady road toward the railroad station
“killing time,” before the family conference which had been called for
ten o’clock.
Nat and Ned White, Dorothy’s cousins, had gone off in their auto, the
_Fire Bird_, on an errand, and the girls had an idea they might come
home by this route, and so pick them up.
“Hush!” cried Tavia, suddenly. “Methinks I hear footsteps approaching
on horseback.”
“That’s no horse you hear,” Dorothy said. “It is somebody walking on
the bridge over the brook.”
There was a turn in the road just ahead and the girls could not see the
bridge. But in a moment they could descry the figure of a man striding
toward them.
“This must have been what you were he-heing for,” whispered Dorothy.
“How romantic!” was Tavia’s utterance.
“What is romantic about a man coming up from the station?”
“Don’t you see his long, silky black mustache? And his long hair and
broad hat? Goodness! he’s a picture.”
“Yes. The stage picture of a villain--_Simon Legree_ type,” scoffed
Dorothy. “That red silk handkerchief sticking out of his pocket--and
the big diamond in his shirt front--and another flashing on his
finger----”
“My!” gasped Tavia, clasping her hands. “He might have stepped right
out of Bret Harte. Ah-ha! ah-ha! Jack Dalton! unhand me!”
“Hush, Tavia!” begged her chum. “He will hear you.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Tavia, suddenly disturbed. “He’s looking at us--and
he’s crossing over to this side of the road.”
“Well, don’t you look at him any more and--_we’ll_ cross the road, too.”
“Do you suppose he eats little girls?” queried Tavia, with a most
ridiculous air.
Dorothy felt as though she wanted to shake her chum. But then, she
frequently felt _that_ desire. The man was too near for her to speak
again, but the girls crossed the road suddenly.
The man stopped, half turned as though to approach them, and leered
at Dorothy and Tavia. He was not a large man, but he was remarkably
dressed. His black suit was rather wrinkled, as though he had been
traveling some time in it. The broad-brimmed hat gave him the air of
a Westerner, or Southerner. And his flashy appearance made him very
distasteful to Dorothy.
She made Tavia hurry on, and soon they reached the bridge themselves.
Tavia was “raving” again:
“Those wonderful eyes! Did you see them? Deep brown pools of
light--only one was green? Did you notice it, Doro?”
“No, I didn’t. I told you not to look at him again. You might have
encouraged him to follow us.”
“I wonder how it would feel to be a gambler’s bride. I just _feel_
that he’s from the West and is a gambler, or a cowpuncher--or a
maverick--or----”
“You don’t even know what a maverick is,” scoffed Dorothy.
“Yes, I do! A maverick steals cattle,” declared Tavia, quite soberly.
“You ridiculous thing! It’s ‘rustlers’ that steal cattle--or used to. A
‘maverick’ is a stray calf without a brand.”
“Well! he looked as though he had strayed---- Oh, Doro!” gasped Tavia,
suddenly. “He’s coming back.”
The girls had reached the bridge and had stopped upon it. The brown
water was gurgling over the stones, the birds were twittering in the
bushes, and the scent of the wild roses was wafted to them as they
leaned upon the bridge-rail.
It was a lovely picture, and Dorothy and Tavia fitted right into it.
But the picture did not suit Dorothy and Tavia at all when they saw the
black-hatted man round the turn in the road.
They felt just as though the picture needed some action. An automobile
with Ned and Nat in it, would have furnished just the life the girls
thought would improve the scene.
“Come on!” whispered Dorothy. “Don’t let him speak.”
But it was too late to escape that. “Little ladies!” exclaimed the man.
“You’re not going to run away from me, are you?”
Tavia _would_ have run; only, as she confessed to Dorothy later, her
skirt “was not built that way.” Now, however, Dorothy had to face the
man.
“What do you want?” she asked, just as sternly as she could speak.
“Oh, now, little lady,” began the fellow, “you mustn’t be angry.”
Dorothy turned her back and seized Tavia’s arm. “Come on,” she said,
with much more confidence in her voice than she actually felt.
“Ned and Nat will soon be along. Come!”
The girls began walking briskly. “Is--is he going to follow us?”
whispered Tavia.
“Don’t you _dare_ look back to see,” commanded Dorothy, fiercely.
Either the black-hatted man was not very bold and bad, after all, or
Dorothy’s remark about expecting the boys fulfilled its duty. He did
not follow them beyond the bridge.
“Oh, Doro! You can’t blame me this time,” urged Tavia, as they hurried
on.
“I do not believe the fellow would have dared speak to us if you had
not rolled your big eyes at him,” declared Dorothy, rather sharply.
“Oh, Doro! I didn’t!” Then she began giggling again. “It is your fatal
beauty that gets us into such scrapes--you know it is.”
It was little use scolding Tavia. Dorothy was well aware of that.
She had “summered and wintered” her chum too long not to know how
incorrigible she was.
For fear the man might still follow them, Dorothy insisted upon taking
the first side road and so walking back to Aunt Winnie White’s home,
the Cedars, by another way. When they arrived the boys were there
before them.
“Hi, girls! where were you?” shouted Nat. “We looked for you along the
station road.”
“Did you come right up from the station?” demanded Tavia, eagerly.
“Sure!”
“Did you see a black-mustached pirate down there by the bridge, with a
yellow diamond in his bosom----”
“In the bridge’s bosom?” demanded Nat.
“Of the pirate’s shirt,” finished Tavia. “Such a mustache! He looked
deliciously villainous.”
“Another conquest?” grunted Nat, who never liked to see any fellow
“tagging about after Tavia,” as he expressed it, unless it was a
gallant of his own choosing.
“He followed Dorothy--and spoke to her,” declared Tavia, with
effrontery. “And she spoke to him.”
“Soft pedal! soft pedal, there, Tavia!” urged Ned, who had overheard.
“We know Dorothy.”
“And we know _you_,” added his brother. “You’ll have to unwind a better
string than that, Tavia. There’s a ‘knot’ in it--Dorothy did _not_.”
“Ask her!” snapped Tavia, quite offended, and marched away toward the
house.
Dorothy at that moment appeared on the side porch. “Come in, boys, do,”
she urged. “It’s ten o’clock and everybody else is in the library. Your
mother is all ready to unveil the Great Surprise.”